Gastronomy to new heights as taste of the Orient comes to town

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 14

Food lovers in the city have a great news in store for them with the famous Hotel Sepal coming up with its new authentic Oriental food restaurant, Dragon’s Den. The hotel is now organising an Oriental food festival there.

Oriental food is cuisine prepared in a style resembling that used in countries of East Asia, including China, Japan, Thailand and Korea.

Dragon’s Den specialises in Oriental food, especially Chinese, Japanese and Malaysian. Here, you can also try out Mediterranean cuisines but won’t get anything of the Indian cuisine here.

Though food is what we would be focusing on, the décor too needs special mention. The highlight of the decor is a dragon built on the entrance of the restaurant area and its suitably designed basement. The ambience of the restaurant has been given an Oriental flavour with statues of decorative Buddha kept inside it.

Now, coming to food, the USP of the restaurant is the authentic Oriental cuisines served here. You can try a variety of Sushi (Japanese sea food) here. Hosomaki Sushi is served in both veg and non-veg varieties. In the vegetarian form of the dish, rolls of sticky rice are covered with sea weed with a choice of filling— cucumbers, carrot, bell peppers, avocado and asparagus. The non-vegetarian dish is served with a choice filling of salmon, tuna, prawns and chicken breast.

Japanese fish sake wine is another exotic delicacy being offered at the restaurant. It is high in demand as well. Japanese chicken and Shiitake Teriyaki with Shichimi is another dish which can be tried here.

If you’re interested in Vietnamese and Thai food, then Vietnamese mint chicken with lemongrass and cinnamon is the dish one should definitely try here. This dish is prepared with coarsely minced chicken with mint and cinnamon and is served with steamed rice.

For Thai food lovers, Kaeng Phed with steamed rice, red or green curry and Thai fish butter garlic is the best bet one can get here.

Non-vegetarian enthusiasts have great options to choose from as this restaurant also serves prawns, lamb and crab apart from fish and chicken. The item which can be tasted here are Tobanjan prawns, a dish in which prawns, bok choy, broccoli, shitake, basil and fresh chilli is cooked in curry paste and coconut milk. The crispy prawn chilli mustard sambal is a fried prawn dish in which prawns are cooked along with bell peppers, onions in chilli mustard and sambal sauce.

If you are interested in trying and tasting something new, then go for the blackpepper crab item served here.

Another aspect worth mentioning is that the executive chef of the restaurant specialises in Oriental cuisine. Having served in Singapore, executive chef Uday Raj said he cooks authentic Oriental food. “Having worked in Singapore, I use the ingredients used in Oriental countries,” he said.

Arish Katia, managing director of Hotel Sepal, said they wanted to start a specialist restaurant for a particular cuisine and give an authentic taste to food lovers in the city. “We already have a restaurant in our hotel which serves north Indian food. So, we decided to open an Oriental restaurant in our hotel and we are getting a great response.”